The Rover’s Return
Hello! I’m back from my holiday, during which I did not have much opportunity to blog the many marvellous things that happened to me, which included being pecked by lorikeets, seeing possums and wallabies, drinking dirty martinis under the ocean-side palms and watching my little sister get married on a beach. There will be holiday updates soon, and oh my, will they be a hoot. I hope.
In the meantime, the first thing that we had to do when we got back was to visit the registrar to state our intent to marry each other. I had no idea you had to do this kind of thing - get permission from the council to get married? What the fuck have the council got to do with it? Aren’t they responsible for refuse collection and digging up the roads in an inconvenient fashion?
Of course, I realise that there has to be a record of births, deaths and marriages, and that this has to be done by the parish. However, I’d not given much thought to the fact that you have to go and hand over a cheque for £60 and answer questions about your intended in order to prove that you haven’t imported them from a developing nation for tax breaks.
I actually started to get a bit worried when Gordon, having been asked the relatively straightforward question of his age at the current time, had some trouble answering. Would the registrar think that he had failed to memorise his cover properly? I hoped he didn’t sound too Lithuanian.
‘You’re 41′, I hissed, hoping to support him (in a future-wifely fashion) through this mental meltdown.
‘Don’t help him! You’re not allowed to help him!’ said the registrar.
The same thing happened when it came to the answering of questions about his bride, amongst which were details of my age, occupation and length of time lived in Bournemouth. There is only so much information you can convey with your eyebrows, and ‘34′, ‘Trust Fundraising Manager’ and ‘7 months’ tends to be a little specific. We did get there in the end, although I think my gurning may have alarmed the registrar.
So, we have no officially declared our intention to get hitched, and with any luck, no lunatics (you know who you are) will write in to the council objecting on entirely spurious grounds in the next 15 days.
It feels like I’m practically married already.